What is Working around Illinois
Oct 14, 2009, Lisa Jacobs
Models for Change is a national initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to accelerate reform of juvenile justice systems across the country (www.modelsforchange.net). Focused on efforts in four core states, including Illinois, the initiative aims to create replicable models for reform that effectively hold young people accountable for their actions, provide for their rehabilitation, protect them from harm and provide meaningful opportunities for positive youth outcomes.
Models for Change efforts in Illinois are focused statewide through grants to a wide variety of organizations and entities, including advocacy organizations such as the Juvenile Justice Initiative. The initiative also relies upon lessons learned in five demonstration sites that include: Cook County, DuPage County, Ogle County, Peoria County, and the 2nd Judicial Circuit. These sites are utilizing a wide array of strategies to support local reform and, in doing so, are creating a diverse menu of approaches underway in Illinois. The summaries below highlight some of these strategies.
Cook County
Cook County’s Models for Change project builds upon the highly successful Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative by developing ways to improve the outcomes of youth in detention alternatives. This work is lead by Youth Outreach Services (YOS), a community-based social service agency. With Models for Change support, evening reporting center staff has been equipped to use a reliable, “evidence-based” screening tool called MAYSI-2 (Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-Second Version) to assist juvenile justice practitioners in identifying youths with special mental health needs.
This new screening process has produced remarkable information not previously gathered, utilized, nor acted upon to link youth and families with community-based mental health services which can keep youth out of detention while reducing recidivism and improving outcomes for families and the communities in which they live. Currently, YOS is documenting this model for replication in other reporting centers in Cook County and across the state.
In their next phase of work, YOS will be developing intervention strategies in domestic battery cases, with an emphasis on keeping youth and family members safe and resolve crises without overreliance on secure detention.
DuPage County
DuPage County has invested in the principle that treating youth in the community is better for community safety and costs less than incarceration. Despite being one of the largest counties in Illinois, DuPage utilizes its secure detention facility and commits youth to the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice at consistently low rates. Instead, DuPage County leaders have focused on keeping youth in trouble with the law in the community through a continuum of effective, cost-efficient and reliable treatment options. Even when youth are detained, they participate in an intense, youth-focused program which incorporates principles of Restorative Justice, behavior modification, social skills training, cognitive behavioral interventions, motivational enhancement theory, and dialectical behavior therapy – all geared to reduce their risk of re-offending and successfully return to their communities.
For its Models for Change work, DuPage County has taken on distinct and challenging issues, including developing specialized approaches with youth involved both in child protection and delinquency systems. A recent summit on dual jurisdiction highlighted very successful efforts in Addison between local law enforcement, the probation department and Lutherbrook, a local residential center for boys who have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect. The collaboration has resulted in new policies and practices governing when to involve police in problems at the group home, using more effective conflict-resolution tools and ideas for new training resources for staff, resulting in promising decreases in detention admissions and length of stay in the first several months of this work. The collaboration has also engaged police in positive youth programming at the facility such as soccer, baseball, and cookouts.
DuPage County stakeholders are also developing strategies to increase family involvement, support and accountability, improve interventions with youth charged with sex offenses, and enhance outcomes for youth involved in the justice system due to family violence and conflict.
Ogle County
Ogle County is building a model for local governance, accountability, and decision-making through its Juvenile Justice Council, which has taken on the challenge of developing a juvenile justice system in which victims, offenders, and the community work together, seek better alternatives for troubled youth, and focus on the future. The Council has increased its membership to ensure diverse representation and conducted a community assessment and analysis.
The results are promising. Ogle County’s probation leaders and the Illinois Balanced and Restorative Justice Project have teamed up to enhance the use of restorative justice practices which can divert youth from formal system involvement and keep community members involved constructively in the juvenile system. Local educational leaders have worked with the Council to develop alternatives to out of school suspensions which leave youth unsupervised and disconnected from their school work. Ogle County leaders have executed a policy agreement to allow better mental health screening and service linkages to prevent youth from entering the justice system due to undetected mental or behavioral health problems, while implementing safeguards to protect a youth’s rights against self-incrimination. The Council has enhanced mechanisms for youth to expunge delinquency records and is continually improving their website, public materials, and community outreach efforts to provide more clear, user-friendly information about the local juvenile justice system and resources for parents to obtain help and support. As the Models for Change work continues, a key goal will be to ensure that state policy, practice, and resource allocation supports the kind of leadership and accountability Ogle County leaders are modeling so successfully.
Peoria County
Peoria County’s Models for Change work involves broad system analysis, strengthened local partnerships, and new linkages among juvenile justice initiatives underway in Peoria County. One area of focus has been to analyze system data on abused or neglected youth who were being disproportionately detained and for longer periods than necessary in the delinquency system. Peoria project leaders gathered and analyzed system data on these dually-involved youth and, based on this analysis, are developing collaborative practices with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to identify DCFS wards entering detention, so that these youth could be linked with community-based services more effectively.
In addition to its Models for Change work, Peoria County has been actively involved in other juvenile justice reform efforts, including reducing disproportionate minority contacts, reducing detention admissions and length of stay through the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative, reducing commitments to the state Department of Juvenile Justice through Redeploy Illinois, and increasing the use of balanced and restorative justice practices to decrease delinquency referrals from schools. Involvement in these projects has revealed opportunities for --- and a strong local commitment to -- broader systemic analysis and improvement through a strengthened Juvenile Justice Council. Among the local stakeholders’ priorities is developing effective, locally-appropriate strategies to divert youth from unnecessary formal system involvement and instead link them with community-based resources which more effectively address underlying causes of delinquency.
2nd Judicial Circuit
The 2nd Judicial Circuit entered the Models for Change initiative with a strong, vibrant local Juvenile Justice Council focused on ongoing system improvement. Among their successes are implementation of balanced and restorative justice practices that divert youth from the justice system, annual programs that draw hundreds of participants from across the 12 counties that comprise the circuit, and a variety of innovative, collaborative delinquency prevention and intervention efforts among system and community stakeholders. However, this work quickly revealed that stakeholders lacked easy access to the information needed to make decisions in individual cases and struggled to get the aggregate data needed to determine the impact of varied policies and programs.
With blended support from Models for Change and Redeploy Illinois, the 2nd Circuit has developed, piloted, and implemented a new data platform, called JWATCH, which provides the information individual probation officers need about the youth involved in the delinquency system and – as importantly – creates the aggregate data the system stakeholders need to know what works, what doesn’t, and how their local goals can be achieved. This data platform is now being readied for implementation statewide.
This article originally appeared in the September newsletter of the Juvenile Justice Initiative (http://www.jjustice.org/).